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Security

Computer security and the lack of computer security is a fundamental issue that underpins much of how the Internet does (and doesn't) function. Many of the policy issues that EFF works on are linked to security in deep ways including privacy and anonymity, DRM, censorship, and network neutrality.

EFF works directly on a wide range of security issues including increased deployment of cryptographic protocols through projects like HTTPS Everywhere and Certbot; improving the security of those protocols with the SSL Observatory; offering legal assistance to researchers through our Coders' Rights Project; offering practical security advice to activists through the surveillance self-defense project; directly auditing open source codebases; and working on the development of new security standards.

Security Highlights

The web is in the middle of a massive change from non-secure HTTP to the more secure HTTPS protocol. All web servers use one of these two protocols to get web pages from the server to your browser. HTTP has serious problems that make it vulnerable to eavesdropping and content...

EFF's Coders' Rights Project protects programmers and developers engaged in cutting-edge exploration of technology. Security and encryption researchers help build a safer future for all of us using digital technologies, but too many legitimate researchers face serious legal challenges that prevent or inhibit their work. These challenges come from laws...

Security Updates

The last year has seen enormous progress in encrypting the web. Two categories in particular have made extraordinary strides: news sites and US government sites. The progress in those fields is due to months of hard work from many technologists; it can also be attributed in part to ...

Washington, D.C. – On Thursday, February 2, at 9:30 am, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the law firms of Jones Day and Robins Kaplan will urge an appeals court to let an American continue his suit against the Ethiopian government for infecting his computer with custom spyware and monitoring...

As the presidential campaign was in full swing early last year, now-President Trump made his feelings on encryption clear. Commenting on the Apple-FBI fight in San Bernardino, Trump threatened to boycott Apple if they didn’t cooperate: “to think that Apple won't allow us to get into [the] cell phone,” Trump...

It would have happened slowly at first. A broken hyperlink here and there. A few Google searches with links leading to nowhere. In the beginning, global users of the web would have barely noticed pieces of the Internet going dark. Then there may have been a few investigative journalists piecing...

The Guardian ran a sensational story on Friday claiming a backdoor was discovered in WhatsApp, enabling intelligence agencies to snoop on encrypted messages. Gizmodo followed up saying it's no backdoor at all, but reasonable, intended behavior. So what's really going on here? The lost phone, lost message dilemma...